Modern communication systems may communicate information of dynamic images. For example, modern communication systems may communicate information of moving pictures, based on a sequential set of still images.
To provide for relatively efficient communication of dynamic image information between systems over a communication medium, systems often communicate encoded dynamic image information. For example, various encoding formats may reduce the amount of information that must be transmitted to a receiving system to communicate the image to the receiving system. Many of such encoding techniques include techniques based on communicating information absolutely describing a reference image, along with information describing relative difference (or movement) between an image and the reference image. Examples of such encoding may include, for example, various MPEG-style encoding techniques.
Encoding information describing a reference image and relative difference between an image and the reference image often includes comparing the images to the reference images by spatially shifting one of the images in various directions and distances and comparing the spatially shifted image to the other image to determine if the spatial shift may be utilized to accurately describe the image relative to the reference image. Such spatial shifting and analysis may be very inefficient, depending on the image sequence being encoded.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.